


The Things We Carried

by Mary Reed (Mary_Reed)



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Gun Violence, Herschel and being loved is the real OTP, Homophobic Language, Korean War, Panic Attacks, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Should I tag 50's Jello recipes that Defy the Will of God, TWs in the beginning/end notes, Vietnam War, because this does include one, ish, just so much swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 00:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20349076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mary_Reed/pseuds/Mary%20Reed
Summary: Herschel Baumgardner is one tough son of a bitch. He takes no shit from anyone, and he's never backed down from a fight.Not even when it's a fight his country started.(Not even when it means leaving the people he loves behind)Herschel, Cecil, and Edna through the years.





	The Things We Carried

**Author's Note:**

> Well despite more research than I've done since undergrad, I'm pretty sure I still managed to mess something up here. This treats Herschel like he's fought in every war since WWII, as opposed to including WWII, because I did the math and the timeline on that would be just bonkers. Also I don't remember them referencing Cecil as having ever fought in a war; if I'm wrong consider this an AU cause I'm kind of attached to it now?
> 
> As always, more detailed trigger warnings in the notes, and if you feel I've missed anything please don't hesitate to let me know! This one goes out to the kfam discord for bullying me into posting it instead of obsessing for two more months.

Herschel is 18 and fresh out of high school, flush with the youthful energy and brash confidence of a boy one step away from becoming a man. The table at the exit for the graduation ceremony has a stack of programs on the left side, and a stack of enlistment papers on the right. Herschel, who walked with Cecil and is holding hands with Edna, picks up a packet thoughtlessly. 

(Nothing about this is thoughtless. Herschel thinks of his father’s face when he was 8 and he dropped a plate on the floor, a crash and then a flinch. He thinks of the way his mother cans everything she can get her hands on, the rows upon rows of preserved food in the cellar, the careful way she handles every plant in her garden like it’s something precious. 

He thinks of Cecil, tipsy and giggling and vulnerable after an ill-advised six pack stolen from the grocer’s truck, telling him that his right leg was never gonna grow in just right, that he’d have a limp and an ache his whole life.

He thinks of Edna and her sailor’s mouth and her powder blue hair ribbon.

He tucks the papers in his coat.)

Edna and Cecil both fight him on it, begging him to wait until the draft calls him, Cecil clutching his 4F like he can will it to change if he just wishes hard enough. But Herschel Baumgartner don’t back down from no challenge, and he sure as hell don’t sit around if his home is in danger. 

He turns in the forms the next morning. He’s off to basic by the end of the week. 

He has a ribbon and a bottle cap tucked in his breast pocket. 

* * * *

Herschel is 22 and finally home. 

A lovely combat nurse, who laughed and made eyes at an administrative assistant in kitten heels when he stutteringly told her he was already taken, helped him punch a hole in the bottle cap and sew it to the ribbon so he wouldn’t lose it. Edna has it threaded through her braid like a badge of honor. 

Herschel is 22 and he doesn’t quite fit in his skin, anymore. He helps Edna make a red gelatin casserole and he can’t breathe, shaking apart on the kitchen floor of the little house they bought together because his hands are stained red, _again_ (_still_). 

He goes hunting with Cecil (who grew a patchy beard, the bastard) and makes one clean shot and then drops the rifle. He swears breathlessly and slams his fist into a tree because he’s supposed to better than this, _stronger _than this. 

Cecil grabs his wrists and wraps him in a crushing hug and Herschel does not cry because he’s a man, dammit, and men don’t cry about things like dead pheasants and ghosts breathing down their neck. 

Cecil calls back Hershey (“I named her after you Hersch! And chocolate, ‘cause of her fur” “oh fuck off Cecil”) and they walk back to the truck.

Hershey drops the pheasant in the forest at a hand signal from Cecil. Edna doesn’t ask why they’re empty handed when they return.

They pick up fishing, after that. 

* * * *

Herschel is 29 and Edna is crying.

It’s been seven long years of adjusting. Edna, who always loved Herschel for his sharp edges, relearns where they sit, which ones are new and which ones can’t be dulled until the sun rises and chases off the nightmares. 

Cecil learns how to breathe with another person when they can’t do it alone, learns what surfaces are safe to punch and which will break your hand, how to hold someone when they slip out of time so they’ll be safe when they find their way back. 

Herschel is 29 and draft dodgers are dominating the news cycle. Half the men in town are asking Cecil why he won’t nut up and fight, and the other half want to know how he swung a 4F with nothing more than the slightest hitch in his walk (the slightest twinge when he leans on his right leg and the whole thing goes limp, the smallest, stifled whimper every time he shifts wrong and the bone scrapes a nerve). 

Cecil stops going to Rose’s with the pretty young thing he met getting his teaching degree, stops telling stories about his students, and Herschel _fumes_. 

Begley’s boy keeps asking when his pa’s comin’ home, nursing split lips and practicing his right hook with Herschel every time Edna catches the neighborhood kids yelling “faggot” from the street. 

Herschel is 29 and he signs his re-enlistment papers at the kitchen table he built with Edna and Cecil in their shitty garage a month after he got back. 

Edna is crying because she saw this coming, she did, but she doesn’t want to lose Herschel and she doesn’t know if the war or the shell shock will get him first. She is crying because Herschel hasn’t talked to Cecil in two weeks, refuses to apologize for a snide remark about “medical exemptions” that she knows was meant to drive him away so it would hurt less. 

Herschel is called away within the week. Edna calls Cecil the morning of and does not tell Herschel until they’re at the airport and his only options are to punch Cecil or say goodbye. (He settles for both, and Cecil rubs his arm and laughs and pulls his best friend into a hug despite his protests). 

He doesn’t know if he’ll be back. Edna isn’t crying now, but Cecil is.

He has a ribbon and a bottle cap tucked in his breast pocket. 

* * * *

Herschel is 34 and he has two weeks before he has to go back. 

It is the third time he’s had to do this since re-enlisting. It doesn’t get any easier to leave. 

(It doesn’t get any easier to come home, either)

He spends most of it curled around Edna while Cecil watches _Gunsmoke_ and makes shitty jokes and lets Herschel pretend he hates that they’re squished up against each other (“goddamn shitty-ass loveseat is too damn small” “whatever you say Hersch”).

Begley’s boy’s gotten bigger again, and Edna stops Herschel from running outside when he hears a Frickard yell “fag” so he can watch Ron deck the bastard. His dad came home three months before Herschel’s first tour ended, sporting a limp and an honorable discharge. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of his gruff son, who only knew how to throw one kind of punch and how to make eyes at one kind of person. It took one talk with Edna and Hersch’s neglected hunting rifle for the older Begley to come around and teach his son how to fight clean (he lets Cecil teach him how to fight dirty). 

Through the open window he can hear the kid yelling something unintelligible involving the words “frog” and “fucker” that he idly wishes he could make out. Boy’s got a mouth on him, thanks to Edna, mostly. 

Herschel is 34 and he feels like he’s never going to stop fighting.

(Herschel is 34 and he’s not sure he ever wants to. 

He isn’t sure there’s anything left underneath that, anymore). 

Cecil spends the night with them the day before Herschel’s set to redeploy; by sunset he has gone so still and so empty that Edna drags them both to bed and lets Cecil take the other side so Herschel will be safe between them. (Herschel does not protest when Cecil wraps his arms around him and squeezes so hard Edna has to shift to stay in contact. Neither of them know if this is a good sign or a very, very bad one). 

Begley’s son is twiddling his thumbs at their front door when the three of them leave to take Herschel to the airport. He gives Herschel a rough hug and a gentle right hook to the bicep and then sprints to his bike and takes off, mumbling about Kingsie needing something. 

Herschel is 34 and the only thing he’s more afraid of than leaving is coming back, but Edna makes him swear he will and Cecil just hugs him and tells him he’ll watch out for Edna and Ron and the rest for as long as Herschel needs.

He has a ribbon and a bottle cap tucked in his breast pocket.

They’re not as clean as they used to be. 

**Author's Note:**

> TW for homophobic slur (specifically the f-one and its diminutive form), panic attacks, flashbacks, combat-related PTSD, guns and gun violence, hunting animals, punching, solid C- parenting, discussion of active combat and U.S. war involvement
> 
> Just as a ref, I have Hersch and Cecil in current canon as early 80s and Ron as late-ish 50s because I do what I want (and I've always pictured Ron as older). Also this chapter goes up to the Vietnam War (the last entry here is the last entry set during the war; the next kicks off with Hersch coming home after). 
> 
> Comments inspire me to write more and better tales, so please drop me a line. I'd love to yell about this some more!


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